Microsoft Will Not Release DirectX 10 for Windows XP – ATI. [Archive]

Sybixsus

05-27-2006, 01:29 PM

But of course. Vista only really has three things going for it. It has some nice networking improvements over XP. It has a pretty transparent interface that will interest people for ten minutes before they realise it's consuming more system resources than your average video editing application and turn it all off, and the fact that every new HP, Dell, etc customer will be stuck with it whether they want it or not.

So they're going to have to force us to upgrade. Halo 2, DirectX 10. Expect to see more joining the list soon.

Don't really like it, but it's sensible marketing. Problem: You have a product that people aren't too bothered about. Solution: Make it essential for several other products which people are slightly more bothered about.

PeterM

05-27-2006, 01:37 PM

It's a bit sad really, since Halo 2 obviously doesn't need to use more than DX8 if it runs on the original Xbox. Unless I'm missing something.

I understand that MS want people to switch, and that the new driver system is awesome for sure, but I can forsee a lengthy painful transition period of developers clinging on to DX9 (or lower for casual devs) while MS (and in turn NVIDIA, ATI, Intel, etc) gradually drop support for it.

It's going to be fun...

J.A.W

05-27-2006, 02:02 PM

I dual boot Windows and Linux, and the only thing I need Windows for nowadays is games. I've been following the Vista news and discussions for years and i think when MS inevitably force me to upgrade by making WinXP obsolete i shall banish Windows from my system altogether rather than buy that steaming pile they call Vista. How many rewrites has it had? how many of its features have been dropped? how many times has it been delayed? How many damn versions of it are there? Its the joke of the IT industry is it not? :D

The writing is on the wall for them.. and they know it!

Anthony Flack

05-27-2006, 05:24 PM

Microsoft have the operating system market pretty much sewn up, but nobody really needs to buy any more copies of Windows any more. So I guess this sort of tactic is going to be increasingly strong-arm (perhaps moving to a subscription model at some point). I wonder how long they can keep it up for? Eventually, if you keep milking people they are going to go elsewhere, like J.A.W.

XP isn't exactly old.

dxgame

05-27-2006, 08:25 PM

So will our older games still work on this new OS or not? (Games that use DX7, 8, 9, etc..)

Jim Buck

05-28-2006, 12:48 AM

Yes, Microsoft has generally been pretty pro-active about making sure things are backward-compatible. No worries about older games working unless they are from DOS days (even then, I think a good number of those work), but that's not any different than how much DOS games work on XP.

Anthony Flack

05-28-2006, 04:24 AM

Because it would be awfully stupid if their new OS stopped older programs from working. People would really be happy about making unneccessary and expensive upgrades then.

Michael Flad

05-28-2006, 04:52 AM

DirectX 10 requires hardware to really support quite a lot of features (i.e. no caps checking horror just to give each hardware vedor the option to support whatever subset they like to support - there will still be some caps, but not the amount gamedevs are used to) so chances are probably very high, that very few existing cards used int XP systems will be DX10 compatible anyways.

Even Aeroglass is based on DX9 so it'll be probably a safe bet for the next decade in casual/indie games - really no reason to worry. DX10 will just make highend gamedev a bit more comfortable regarding graphics hardware - and eventually indiegames will get those benefits too.

J.A.W

05-28-2006, 05:32 AM

Isn't DirectDraw (last in DX7) still the API of choice for old style 2d devs though, or has everyone switched to doing 2d with 3d hardware? I'm sure there was talk of dropping support for DX7 (and so DirectDraw)? Perhaps i;m just stuck in the dark ages ;-)

So will DX10 ship with the Home Basic Edition of Vista? This is interesting because if it *does* come with DX10, then most likely the PC won't have decent 3d hardware to make use of much of it?

Besides, i;m sure my office pc is going to remain on WinXP for a while yet (which i;m sure will be the case in most offices) and this is the small (casual) games to "play at work" category...

Donavon Keithley

05-28-2006, 10:17 AM

Savant

05-28-2006, 10:49 AM

Apparently Microsoft is more interested in accelerating the sales of a relatively small number of Vista upgrades than in nurturing the PC as a gaming platform.
I think it's more accurate to say that they are interested in accelerating the sales of XBox units.

arcadetown

05-28-2006, 11:08 AM

Sounds good to me. DX10 doesn't really add anything for us casual games nor a stagnating pc core gamer market.

Because it would be awfully stupid if their new OS stopped older programs from working. People would really be happy about making unneccessary and expensive upgrades then.
Unlike on the Mac where users seem to love being whacked over the head with some new incompatibility of the year due to the latest os or hardware release. Some people simply love pain.

Michael Flad

05-28-2006, 11:31 AM

Wow.

This means it's going to be years before developers will be able to target DX10 exclusively. If I were (still) a retail game developer, I'd be furious.

The latest hardware features won't be accessible for the majority of PCs for years to come (notwithstanding that this will induce many hardcore types to upgrade to Vista). If I were NVIDIA or ATI, I'd be furious.

Games will have to support DX9 as a fallback for years to come, which gloriously complicates development. If I were a middleware vendor, I'd be tickled pink.

Apparently Microsoft is more interested in accelerating the sales of a relatively small number of Vista upgrades than in nurturing the PC as a gaming platform.

Sure - it's just like a lot of indiegames (even silghtly more "hardcore" alike projects like Wik) still support software rendering while consumer 3D was already available back in the last days of DOS, i.e. 5 Windows versions ago.
Supporting fallbacks for a pretty broad range of hardware and/or apis is what PC games had to do since they exist - cga,ega,vga dx,gl,glide you name it.

The real hardcore gamer will do a big upgrade at least after about 2 years (that'll be 2-4 new generations of gfxcards) and they're what the DX10 games aim at - add a development cycle of 24-36 months and you're there.

Less hardcore games can use DX9 for a long time so I don't see any disadvantage.

Microsoft is doing just the right thing with DX10 to support developers. One of the biggest advantages of consoles is the fixed hardware - it's obviously not possible in the PC market but it's probably the biggest possible step in that direction, given the nature of the systems/market.

Donavon Keithley

05-28-2006, 12:20 PM

Targeting multiple APIs (talking here about big-budget retail development) is *very* expensive -- in terms of development, testing, and support. Nobody does it without good reason, and if that reason is only because Vista's marketing people are trying to be heroes and save the day -- well, that's not what I consider supporting developers (nor the platform itself).

Developers have only recently begun to stop supporting Windows 98. Vista is not going to appear on anybody's min spec for a very long time to come.

Savant

05-28-2006, 12:26 PM

Nobody does it without good reason, and if that reason is only because Vista's marketing people are trying to be heroes and save the day -- well, that's not what I consider supporting developers (nor the platform itself).
Yeah, but it's only going to affect you as a developer if your game requires something in DirectX 10. If you're coding to that high of a spec, requiring Vista probably isn't asking too much of your users.

Donavon Keithley

05-28-2006, 12:48 PM

Yeah, but it's only going to affect you as a developer if your game requires something in DirectX 10. If you're coding to that high of a spec, requiring Vista probably isn't asking too much of your users.
Okay, so say you want to take advantage of geometry shaders. If that means excluding even 10% of your potential audience, marketing and management will veto you on this. Your option is to either stick with DX9 or fall back to DX9.

On the last game I worked on, about two years ago, we very much wanted Win2k for the min spec. The estimate came in that something like 5-8% (I don't recall exactly) of our relatively hard-core audience was still on Win98. No deal -- the game has to run on Windows 98.

EDIT: It's a cost-benefit analysis. If supporting DX9 proved to be sufficiently expensive, I can see dropping the 10% of the market, but not much more.

Fabio

05-28-2006, 10:10 PM

"Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest maker of software, will not release next-generation graphics application programming interface (API) called DirectX 10 for the currently shipping Windows XP operating system (OS), instead, the company will keep the new API strictly for the forthcoming Windows Vista OS, despite earlier assumptions about DirectX 10 for the XP." Mobosoft strikes again. :D

If Bill Gates runs as president of the U.S.A. prepare to see many more wars in the future (such as "preemptive invasion of Cupertino", or "capture Thorvalds and lock him without process in Guantanamo forever"). Seriously, I'm really sick of this company and its practices.. I'm not (technically speaking) a fan of Linux at all, but I hope every day that it smashes the Windows market preferably sooner or eventually later, once and for all.

Fabio

05-28-2006, 10:13 PM

"Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest maker of software, will not release next-generation graphics application programming interface (API) called DirectX 10 for the currently shipping Windows XP operating system (OS), instead, the company will keep the new API strictly for the forthcoming Windows Vista OS, despite earlier assumptions about DirectX 10 for the XP."
Mobosoft strikes again. :D

If Bill Gates runs as president of the U.S.A. prepare to see many more wars in the future (such as "preemptive invade Cupertino"). Seriously, I'm really sick of this company and its practices.. I'm not (technically speaking) a fan of Linux at all, but I hope every day that it smashes the Windows market preferably sooner or eventually later, once and for all.

Coming from the Amiga world, I know how much MS has ruined the computers industry, to offer nothing valuable back. The computer world would be much much much better today if Bill never bothered the world with his money ambitions.

Polycount Productions

05-29-2006, 12:23 AM

Well...

1) When Windows Vista will be available? Like... in year 2910 (or 2008 or something). That's two or three years anyway.

2) We use Direct7 or DX8 for heaven's sake. DX7 will work on windows vista. We use technology that's been here for over a decade.

So, as a developer: this doesn't mean nothing to indies.

As a player: you need to update to get to play the new DX10 games. But of course you don't want to play those - as you enjoy playing indie games. Right?

luggage

05-29-2006, 04:46 AM

I fail to see how Microsoft have ruined the computer industry. If you remember PC's from way back when I'm sure you'll remember the headache of working with them. We worked on a game where the boss wouldn't fork out for Miles Sound Drivers (middleware) so we had to write a driver for every single sound card that was available. DirectX came along and (eventually) put an end to all that.

Comparing Microsoft to the Amiga is not a fair comparison. The Amiga had the advantage of a consistant set of hardware, the PC hasn't. Until Microsoft came along with their OS and attempted to get some standards in the PC market it was all over the shop.

Savant

05-29-2006, 05:06 AM

Fabio

05-29-2006, 05:39 AM

I was wondering when this would turn into yet-another-Microsoft-is-evil rant platform. I think we should call this the "Fabio factor" - a measure of the amount of time before any thread with the word "Microsoft" in the title devolves into this inane crap. Savant, you just wasted your Nth great, undeserved chance to shut your stinking mouth up. If I turn every other thread into an anti-Microsoft discussion I can only be proud of this, I also have the experience to do it, you instead turn every other thread into a flamewar or a damn stupid anti-clone thread, without ever having released one single damn game and by then "coherently" promoting "1 good game" a Marble Madness CLONE. When will you release a damn single game? But can you even code at all? You're a royal waste of precious time and definitely act as a fly: you disturb a lot giving nothing, absolutely nothing valuable back. When will you release a damn single game I ask? We've been waiting for this disease for years now. Give it to us or shuddup with your stupid and useless provocations. Thank you Savant for remembering us that you exist, I admit I was happily going to forget.

Fabio

05-29-2006, 06:00 AM

I fail to see how Microsoft have ruined the computer industry. Too many oldies (those that can actually speak, having been there) absolutely think this.. just Google if you're curious about history.

If you remember PC's from way back when I'm sure you'll remember the headache of working with them. We worked on a game where the boss wouldn't fork out for Miles Sound Drivers (middleware) so we had to write a driver for every single sound card that was available. DirectX came along and (eventually) put an end to all that. First of all, the MSDOS that Microsoft finally saved us from was a.. Microsoft product. Second, DirectX with its caps is a mess. If it took 10 releases to remove them (and we've yet to see), then there's definitely something wrong.
Compatibility? Ever tried to run a game that uses DirectX 1,2,3 or sometimes even 5 or 6? Most don't work at all on today's PCs. Talk about compatibility! I am certainly not defending MSDOS, but my old MSDOS VESA/SB games all run at least.

Comparing Microsoft to the Amiga is not a fair comparison. The Amiga had the advantage of a consistant set of hardware, the PC hasn't. Microsoft, with its immense power, could have unified the PC hardware into well defined guidelines (and has done it, but only to the extent that has been convenient for its own profit and to destroy other companies and other OS's which couldn't write drivers for all cards out there).

Until Microsoft came along with their OS and attempted to get some standards in the PC market it was all over the shop. Do you think that the same couldn't have been achieved by OS2 or Linux, to name just two?

Microsoft has always bothered only about its own profit and to destroy other companies, using mafia style actions whenever it was convenient or not too risky. It has been investigated and punished for its mob practices many times, so it's not exactly as candid as Savant sees it with his eyes.
Very rarely the Microsoft's own good (profit) has coincided with the industry's and users' own good, and I won't thank MS for these rare coincidences.

Savant is the perfect Microsoft employee: too bad even they don't want to hire him. :D

PeterM

05-29-2006, 06:08 AM

I agree that MS certainly had the muscle to help unify the PC platform early, but hardware manufacturers are the ones that really caused it not to happen.

For example, you have some product, which is the only one available, the implicit 'standard'. Then another product comes along, either from the same vendor or another one, which is incrementally better than the previous product.

So now you have two standards. What else can people do, but support both?

Fabio

05-29-2006, 06:22 AM

Products of a certain type have similar characteristics, that's why VESA worked for graphics cards even long before DirectX was released. A bad example of standardization, but that yet works, is OpenGL. So..

While nothing should cripple innovation, the NDA you have to sign to develop a driver for a certain card is not exactly free market, even more when they don't give you that info neither if you sign all NDA's in the world. This has prevented for many years the release of Linux drivers for many boards, making lotsa people unhappily stick with Windoze, and killed many other OS's that would otherwise exist today, and that not exist not because the authors couldn't write thousands drivers for them (or at least the most worth ones), but because the information to do so was denied and many witnessed that Microsoft pushed (incentive, threat or whatever else, it doesn't change the substance of things) many manufacturers to not release this info to the other OS's makers.

Nor is free market to force millions of users to buy Vista just to run DX10 games when one wouldn't have otherwise found a single reason to spend that money for yet another hyperbloated OS. Microsoft forces you to have needs you don't really have to then sell you its products.

Do we really have a choice in this market as users or developers? Is this really a free market? Is the best product that always wins, as it should be, or the one that wins is the product with the most powerful company behind, although it is well known to be technically poor?

Would Microsoft even exist today if its successes or insuccesses were only due to its technical merits, and not all its mob style practices and at-art-created monopoly?

Savant

05-29-2006, 07:28 AM

Savant, you just wasted your Nth great, undeserved chance to shut your stinking mouth up. If I turn every other thread into an anti-Microsoft discussion I can only be proud of this, I also have the experience to do it, you instead turn every other thread into a flamewar or a damn stupid anti-clone thread, without ever having released one single damn game and by then "coherently" promoting "1 good game" a Marble Madness CLONE. When will you release a damn single game? But can you even code at all? You're a royal waste of precious time and definitely act as a fly: you disturb a lot giving nothing, absolutely nothing valuable back. When will you release a damn single game I ask? We've been waiting for this disease for years now. Give it to us or shuddup with your stupid and useless provocations. Thank you Savant for remembering us that you exist, I admit I was happily going to forget.
Wowsers! Such hostility.

Bouncer

05-29-2006, 07:41 AM

Fabio: Welcome to the world. Who says that best product should always win? It's the same in every business... Microsoft has done nothing wrong by pursuing a monopoly in the business. Blame the capitalism. Your ranting about Microsoft being somehow worse than other companies is absurd... If commodore had been a success in it's time, it would have made the same decisions as a company as microsoft.

luggage

05-29-2006, 07:43 AM

Fabio - You are being exceptionally unbalanced in your view. I really can't be bothered going through your 'points' as it's more like a post I'd see on slashdot than a reasoned argument.

Savant

05-29-2006, 07:47 AM

You are being exceptionally unbalanced in your view. I really can't be bothered going through your 'points' as it's more like a post I'd see on slashdot than a reasoned argument.
You've now experienced "The Fabio Factor". It burns a little but it goes away with indifference.

Fabio

05-29-2006, 07:58 AM

Hail Bill, he actually invented the computer in a garage!

:p

Fabio

05-29-2006, 07:58 AM

You've now experienced "The Fabio Factor". It burns a little but it goes away with indifference. Get a girlfriend to bother, Savant. Get a life at least. It's about time.

Fabio

05-29-2006, 09:34 AM

Fabio: Welcome to the world. Who says that best product should always win? Thanks but I already noticed this, can I be unhappy about it at least?
It's the same in every business... Microsoft has done nothing wrong by pursuing a monopoly in the business. Blame the capitalism. While I'm a strong believer in the free-market, I never said that capitalism is perfect, did I?
Your ranting about Microsoft being somehow worse than other companies is absurd... If commodore had been a success in it's time, it would have made the same decisions as a company as microsoft. That's completely arguable. Saying that all companies are the same given the same opportunities is like saying that all people are the same. This simplicistic theory has been proven wrong infinite times. Otherwise you also think that all governors are the same, that e.g. if instead of Bush you had Gore then the latter would have done every single thing that Bush has made (and while democrats and republicans look the same, there could be much better examples in other countries were politicians are much more hetereogeneous), or that if instead of Saddam there was some human rights leader then the latter would have done all the things Saddam did, sitting on the same chair having the same huge power.
No, this is plain wrong also for companies: while (expecially corporations) being strongly motivated by profit, no other computer industry company has behaved like Microsoft. Unlike what Bill would make you believe, the anti-Microsoft feeling is quite unique both in the computer industry as well as in other industries. Nobody hates Hilton for being what it is, although many hate McDonalds because eating its food is like eating s*it. But nobody hates General Motors or Toyota for being the biggest car producers in the world, because they make decent products, and as far as we know they got where they are by competition, not by mob practices. Nobody hates Philips (or whoever it is) for being the biggest TV producer in the world. All the trials/proceedings Microsoft had and still has are out of envy (?! for making so much money out of such crap products??) in your opinion?
When IBM was the biggest company in the industry, although it made illegal things (and has been punished for this) nobody had the feeling that it was so much detrimental for the users' interests and whole industry as Microsoft has become. Other BIG companies, like HP, Sun and Xenix while still being driven by profit sit on much legally-cleaner and morally-higher chairs than Microsoft does. As Latins used to say: "vox populi, vox dei".

J.A.W

05-29-2006, 03:50 PM

Although I dislike WIndows, it has helped bring computing to the masses. Linux is only starting to become user friendly, and Macs are still at premium price...

As i'm new here i'm curious as to your development and target platforms Fabio given your hatred of MS Windows?

Fabio

05-29-2006, 10:12 PM

Although I dislike WIndows, it has helped bring computing to the masses. Linux is only starting to become user friendly, and Macs are still at premium price...
Mostly Commodore and Atari (secondarily also Sinclair, Amstrad and others) have helped bring computing to the masses. Do you really really think that computers would not be widespread today if the wonderful Windows hadn't existed? The PC is not a home computer thus it has not helped to bring computer to the masses. At a certain moment in time Commodore and Atari ceased to fill that market and it has been filled with what remained and already was known due to its widespread office use, the PC.

As i'm new here i'm curious as to your development and target platforms Fabio given your hatred of MS Windows? You say you're new but I read the above as a provocation. I've already answered in detail in another post, and I don't want to go through it again. I am coherent with my own life priorities, always been, always will be. Yet I think Windows is pushed on ours throats and I want to say it.

J.A.W

05-30-2006, 01:46 AM

It wasn't provocation, I haven't seen your other post and was wondering if you develop on Windows for Windows, or Linux for Windows, or Mac for Mac, or Mac for Windows, or some other combination etc..

If Amiga, Atari, Amstrad etc were still popular do you think they would have agreed to a common OS? Or would we have to deal with porting across 4 or 5 platforms?

Anyway, as long as we get DX7 backwards support in Windows I'm relatively happy... ;)

Fabio

05-30-2006, 01:53 AM

If Amiga, Atari, Amstrad etc were still popular do you think they would have agreed to a common OS? Or would we have to deal with porting across 4 or 5 platforms? For scientifical and server-like applications there already was and is a standard OS: Unix.

For multimedia applications I don't feel the need for a standard OS, and I would have kept coding games only for the Amiga and its successors anyway, or any other machine worth, by developing specifically for that, to exploit its full potential (to avoid things like those Amiga games ported straight from the Atari ST, where the powerful Amiga coprocessors weren't touched, and the game was actually even slightly slower on the Amiga, due to the multimedia-synched 7.16MHz clock vs 8MHz clock of the same 68000 CPU).

If you need/want porting to several platforms, then use C++ and write for each host OS/hardware all those modules that are non-standard in C++: audio, video, input. There are already libraries for that anyway.

For games and multimedia in general I don't think that a common OS would have been a good thing, at all.

Speckled Jim

05-30-2006, 05:14 AM

That's a lot of hostility. The pc may have started out as an office machine, and for many years was only fit to be so, with audio that consisted of a beeping speaker, and 4 colour CGA graphics, but what we have today is a worthy successor to the old 8 and 16 bit home computers.

Is MS too powerful? Almost certainly, but the standards that it brings, closed or not have made pc development a sane prospect. I doubt many people would like to still be dealing with the nightmare that was DOS mode, or trying to support multiple sound cards with no common API.

As for the Amiga, I can't say I miss it much, but then my memory of it is tainted by having to use one directly to develop on. It was much less painful after I got PDS for it.